The Guardian

The Prince of Wales is encouraging companies to sign up to the Cerrado manifesto, which aims to protect globally important natural landscapes

The loss of rainforest in the Amazon has been a familiar cause for activism for more than 30 years, but the partial success of efforts to protect it is moving the spotlight to a new landscape: Brazil’s cerrado.

Environmentalists fear that measures to reduce the exploitation of the Amazon rainforest for commodities such as soy and beef have pushed some of those activities into formerly less exploited regions such as the cerrado, a vast tropical savannah covering more than 2m sq km.

Rescued cubs had spent nine months in care at National Wildlife Rescue Centre in Fishcross, Clackmannanshire

Three orphaned otters have been released into the wild after more than nine months in care.

Stream, Smoult and Eddie were taken to the National Wildlife Rescue Centre in Fishcross, Clackmannanshire, when they were cubs aged between eight and 10 weeks old.

Exclusive: researchers calculated the total lifecycle emissions of an electric car, including its manufacture, battery manufacture, and all of its energy consumption

Electric cars emit significantly less greenhouse gases over their lifetimes than diesel engines even when they are powered by the most carbon intensive energy, a new report has found.

In Poland, which uses high volumes of coal, electric vehicles produced a quarter less emissions than diesels when put through a full lifecycle modelling study by Belgium’s VUB University.

Indigenous community leaders are urging the UK government to do more to protect the forest dwellers who defend rainforests from illegal loggers

Activists have marched through Whitehall to urge the UK government to give more support to environmental defenders who risk their lives protecting rainforests, rivers and the climate.

The demonstration on Tuesday was led by indigenous leader Candido Mezúa, who bore a banner reading “Guardians of the Forest: end the devastation of the forest and the killing of forest people.”

While almost all companies have plans in place to reduce carbon emissions, those plans don’t go far enough, according to the Carbon Disclosure Project

Nearly nine out of 10 of the world’s biggest companies have plans in place to reduce carbon emissions, new research has found, but only a fifth of them are doing so for 2030 and beyond.

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) also found that only 14% of its sample of 1,073 large companies around the world had “science-based targets” – that is, goals to reduce carbon emissions which are in line with the global agreement to hold warming to no more than 2C, enshrined in the 2015 Paris agreement.

The Google engineer’s infamous sexist manifesto is contradicted by the brilliance of women in science.

What does a sexist Google engineer teach us about women in science?

Nothing.

Analysis of US fracking sites suggests pollutants including airborne particulates and heavy metals could affect neurodevelopment of babies and children

Pollutants released during fracking processes could pose a health risk to infants and children, according to researchers studying chemicals involved in shale gas operations.

The extraction of shale gas using pressurised fluid – a process known as fracking – has been used commercially since the 1950s and in recent years has fuelled an energy boom in the US. Many countries around the world are looking to follow suit – including Australia and the UK, where the first drilling in six years is expected to begin this week in the North Yorkshire village of Kirby Misperton, despite staunch opposition from protesters.

Christine Lagarde warns of ‘dark future’ if the world fails to take steps to address global warming

The world will be in deep trouble if it fails to tackle climate change and inequality, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde has warned.

“If we don’t address these issues... we will be moving to a dark future” in 50 years, she told a major economic conference in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Tuesday.

Transport department publishes new noise analysis and air quality plan, with public consultation now open until 19 December

The public consultation on the planned third runway at Heathrow has been reopened due to new evidence.

The Department for Transport published a series of fresh reports into the impact of expanding the west London hub, including updated noise analysis and a new air quality plan.

Exclusive: Lawson’s claim that global temperatures are not rising went unchallenged, breaching guidelines on accuracy and impartiality

The BBC has apologised for an interview with the climate sceptic Lord Lawson after admitting it had breached its own editorial guidelines for allowing him to claim that global temperatures have not risen in the past decade.

BBC Radio 4’s flagship news programme Today ran the item in August in which Lawson, interviewed by presenter Justin Webb, made the claim. The last three years have in fact seen successive global heat records broken.

New report also reveals rise in large-scale illegal ivory shipments which could be due to panic sell-off by traffickers as countries implement domestic bans

Elephant poaching in Africa has declined for the fifth year in a row, experts have said.

But elephant populations continue to fall due to illegal killing and other human activities, while seizures of large-scale illegal ivory shipments were at record highs in 2016, a new report reveals.

Farmers must be incentivised to tackle decline in biodiversity, says environment secretary at launch of parliamentary soil body

The UK is 30 to 40 years away from “the fundamental eradication of soil fertility” in parts of the country, the environment secretary Michael Gove has warned.

“We have encouraged a type of farming which has damaged the earth,” Gove told the parliamentary launch of the Sustainable Soils Alliance (SSA). “Countries can withstand coups d’état, wars and conflict, even leaving the EU, but no country can withstand the loss of its soil and fertility.

Glyphosate is found in 60% of UK bread and environmentalists welcome a ban but industry warn of uproar among farmers if herbicide is phased out

A pivotal EU vote this week could revoke the licence for the most widely used herbicide in human history, with fateful consequences for global agriculture and its regulation.

Glyphosate is a weedkiller so pervasive that its residues were recently found in 45% of Europe’s topsoil – and in the urine of three quarters of Germans tested, at five times the legal limit for drinking water.

New Zealanders were urged to 'vote kea' in a video campaign for the world's only alpine parrot, resulting in thousands more votes cast for the species than ​actual birds in existence. The nation's annual bird of the year competition hit new heights this year with more than 50,000 votes cast from around New Zealand and the world. Despite their protected status, keas have divided Kiwis between those who enjoy the cheeky parrot’s animated nature and those who curse its destructive habits 

Vice-president Rosario Murillo calls global pact ‘the only instrument we have’ to address climate change as number of outsiders shrinks to two

Nicaragua is set to join the Paris climate agreement, according to an official statement and comments from the vice-president, Rosario Murillo, on Monday, in a move that leaves the United States and Syria as the only countries outside the global pact.

Nicaragua has already presented the relevant documents at the United Nations, Murillo, who is also first lady, said on local radio on Monday.

The world’s only mountain parrot whose cheeky antics divide Kiwis, beats kererū and kākāpō to coveted crown

• New Zealand bird of the year leaderboard: check the pecking order

The kea, the world’s only alpine parrot, has been crowned New Zealand bird of the year, with thousands more votes cast for the species than there are surviving individuals.

New Zealand’s annual bird of the year competition hit new heights this year with more than 50,000 votes cast from around the country and the world. The competition is in its 13th year, and pits the country’s rare and endangered birds against one another. No bird has won twice.

Photographer Tim Flach’s latest book Endangered, with text by zoologist Jonathan Baillie, offers a powerful visual record of threatened animals and ecosystems facing the harshest of challenges

Tim Flach sees his Hasselblad H4D-60 camera as a means to its end: capturing the character and emotions of an animal. Until now his interest has been in the way humans shape animals, but in his new book, Endangered, he poses the question of what these animals, and their potential disappearance, mean to us.

Twenty months of shooting and six months of assembling has resulted in a collection of more than 180 pictures. “In some cases we put up a black background in a zoo or a natural reserve, in others it meant being underwater with hippos or great white sharks.”

Scientists were expected to report that climate change is affecting air and water temperatures, precipitation, sea level and fish in New England’s largest estuary

The Environmental Protection Agency kept three scientists from speaking at a Rhode Island event about a report that deals in part with climate change.

The scientists were expected to discuss in Providence on Monday a report on the health of Narragansett Bay, New England’s largest estuary. The EPA did not explain exactly why the scientists were told not to.

David Attenborough’s ocean wildlife series returns to our screen next week – and a gravity-defying, bird-munching superfish could be its biggest star

Name: Giant trevally.

Appearance: Like a bluefin trevally, but larger and without blue fins.

Plastic pollution, overfishing, global warming and increased acidification from burning fossil fuels means oceans are increasingly hostile to marine life

If the outlook for marine life was already looking bleak – torrents of plastic that can suffocate and starve fish, overfishing, diverse forms of human pollution that create dead zones, the effects of global warming which is bleaching coral reefs and threatening coldwater species – another threat is quietly adding to the toxic soup.

Ocean acidification is progressing rapidly around the world, new research has found, and its combination with the other threats to marine life is proving deadly. Many organisms that could withstand a certain amount of acidification are at risk of losing this adaptive ability owing to pollution from plastics, and the extra stress from global warming.